The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

Our psychological reality, which lies below the surface, frightens us because it endlessly surprises us and drives us in a direction which society's rules and organizations define as wrong or dangerous.

The unconscious can become destructive if it is disregarded and thwarted.

The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery. Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream.

America hates the artist. It will not admit: the artist is my soul and I want to kill off my soul.

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.